Cracking Open the Apple IIc

Cracking Open the Apple IIc

Introduced at the same time as the original Mac, the Apple IIc represented a leap forward for the Apple II line. One of the key improvements was integrating the floppy disk with the main CPU. It was one of the most popular Apple IIs ever.

We recently got an Apple IIc for our Cracking Open series. The poor thing was already damaged in shipment, but here's what it looks like on the inside.

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Right view

Right hand view showing the integrated floppy drive. The Apple II series used 5 1/4" drives for most of their run. The Apple IIc was the first Apple II to have a built in drive.

Take me with you

The c in IIc stood for Compact. It was made to be transportable. As such, it had a handle to make carrying it easier.

Left view

Not much to see here. Just a volume control and headphone jack under the keyboard.

Bottom view

Underneath the unit. As you can see the speaker grille is dented along with the other damage. The IIc uses several standard Phillips screws. Easy to find and disassemble.

Smudged serial number

You can't read the whole serial number. But you can see the rest of the engrained information.

Lifting the lid

The screws come off the bottom and there's one catch on the front near the keyboard. After that, the lid comes right off.

Top lid

Nothing to the lid except for a fine filter over the grille, that you can barely see in this picture.

Above view

Here's the view of the IIc from above.

Keyboard removal

The keyboard isn't screwed in. Instead, there's a tab that tucks under the floppy cage. Otherwise the keyboard is held in place by the now missing case.

Keyboard

The keyboard is disconnected. You can see the connector ribbon at the top.

Keyboard flipped

As you can see, the keyboard is pretty clean on the bottom. No traces to be seen.

Copyright Apple

Apple seems to have made this board themselves, not OEMed it out. At least, it has an Apple logo on it.

Removing the floppy cage

They floppy drive is only held in place by this cable and pressure from the case. There are no other screws attaching it to the case.

Cable

This cable does double duty. It transmits power to the drive as well as data. There is no separate power cables as in modern PCs.

Drive out

Here's the floppy cage removed. The Apple IIc floppy drive is only 140k in capacity.

Underside

Here's the bottom of the drive. You can see the drive belt clearly.

Top of the drive.

Reasonably clean design. Large driver motor can be seen in the lower left.

All lined up

You don't see electronics like this much anymore. Only a few ICs, but the controller is dominated by rows of resistors.

Made by Alps

A popular component maker of the time, Alps provided the floppy drive for Apple.

Above view

Here's the Apple IIc exposed with the keyboard and floppy cage removed. As you can see, the board design is pretty minimalistic. There are few visible resistors and capacitors compared to machines of the same era.

Power supply

Here's the power supply unit. It's small because the AC/DC transformer is external to the unit. This is merely the voltage regulator. As you can see, there's no significant shielding around the power supply on our unit.

Power Supply removed.

It connects with two screws and a card edge connector. Easily removed. The power supply was a whopping 25 watts.

Above view

Here's another view with the power supply gone.

Power Supply hole

Here's where the power supply used to be.

Power to the Apple!

Here's the connectors in the upper left hand corner of the board. There's a small power switch in the upper left hand corner. Next to it, there's a connector for the external power supply. Above the silver capacitor, there's a DIN plug for an external printer.

Top Center

The board is clearly labeled. You can see where all of the interface connectors are across the top. The upper left port is for an external disk drive. Below that, you can see where the floppy cable for the internal drive connects.

Next to that is the composite video out port.

Further to the right, is the connector for a television if you wanted to use that rather than a composite monitor.

Next there's a 9 pin DIN plug for an external modem.

Finally, there is a standard 9-pin port in the upper right for the AppleMouse IIc.

Thanks for the memory!

Here are the memory chips for the Apple IIc. The system came with 128K of RAM, but it could only address memory in banks of 64K. You could expand memory to over 1Mb in size, but this memory was also only available in banks, not as a contiguous 1Mb.

Our Apple motherboard has the base memory soldered on. Memory is expanded via a card whose connector is off the screen to the left. First generation Apple IIc motherboards had socketed memory chips which all had to be removed and replaced for upgrades.

A collection of Apple Chips

Here are 5 main chips on the system board. In the lower right hand corner resides the 65C02 CPU. This is a 1Mhz 8 bit CPU.

The C in the string stands for CMOS. The CMOS version of the chip ran cooler, and took less power, but otherwise is identical to the standard 6502 CPU used on the original Apple II and II+. The chip was manufactured by NCR.

Above the CPU is the MMU and the IOU. To the left is the Keyboard ROM and Firmware ROM. We'll discuss them in the next few slides.

Copyright 1986

This board is silkscreened as 1986. It's not an original Apple IIc. The first Apple IIc came out in 1984 and has a 1983 copyright.

You can see a connector in the upper right. This is for a memory expansion card. Older Apple II motherboard have socketed memory chips that all need to be replaced for upgrades.

Above the copyright, you can see the 65c02 CPU.

Beneath the firmware

Notice the both the Apple and Microsoft copyright notices on the board. The Microsoft copyright is for the Microsoft-produced BASIC that the Apple IIc uses.

Cracked open

Thanks for the memory!

Here are the memory chips for the Apple IIc. The system came with 128K of RAM, but it could only address memory in banks of 64K. You could expand memory to over 1Mb in size, but this memory was also only available in banks, not as a contiguous 1Mb.

Our Apple motherboard has the base memory soldered on. Memory is expanded via a card whose connector is off the screen to the left. First generation Apple IIc motherboards had socketed memory chips which all had to be removed and replaced for upgrades.

Thanks for the memory. My first computer was an Apple IIc in 1984. It won out as my choice over IBM PCjr. Never had any problems with it, and I added a GUI application that gave it a Mac like interface - don't remember the name of that app. I have had 5 Macs since then, so it started me on a long relationship with Apple. Too bad your sample was so damaged in shipment. Cool to see what was inside!

The Apple IIc was one of the most popular computers in the early 1980s. We got our hands on it and promptly tore it apart. Check out the Apple IIc Cracking Open photo gallery at the above link.
You can find out more about the Apple IIc in Classics Rock:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/classic-tech/?p=191

I bought an Apple IIc in 1984 as my first PC after comparing it to an INM PC Jr and used it for about 5 years, so this crack open brings back some memories. Used it mainly for word processing and some presentations. Even had some simple games for the kids. A Mac type GUI program was available for it later, but it was limited.
I went to a 386 PC in the early 90's and used HP's New Wave on it. Since then, I have had 4 Macs and have never gone back to Windows at home. So, this early experience was definitely an influence.